Rickie Fowler, shown playing in the British Open, is one of the favorites this week at the PGA Championship. He has finished second in the last two majors. / Ian Rutherford USA TODAY Sports

by Steve DiMeglio, USA TODAY Sports

by Steve DiMeglio, USA TODAY Sports

Beyond the flamboyant binding featuring all that hair under a flat-brimmed cap, the colorful outfits and the matinee idol looks, there is plenty of substance to go with all of Rickie Fowler's flash.

While he's a hip and rich favorite with Generation Y, who also love the look and his adrenaline junkie ways where he gets his fix on a dirt bike or in an F-16, Fowler's direction, work ethic and character is fueled by the memory of his ancestry's detention in Japanese internment camps and the enduring example set by his parents.

"I come from great stock," Fowler says. "I didn't come from money. My parents both worked really hard to keep food on the table and give my sister and me opportunities to play sports and see what we were good at.

"To see how hard they work is something that I will never forget, and to know where my family came from, what they went through in the internment camps, to see what they believed as far as treating people and treating yourself and your life, that will always stay with me."

A confident Fowler arrived Monday at Valhalla Golf Club for the PGA Championship, the season's last major that begins Thursday.

While he hasn't won this season, his work with Butch Harmon has taken hold as he's the only player with top-5 finishes in each major â?? a tie for fifth in the Masters and ties for second in the U.S. Open and the British Open.

When he arrived on the pro scene in 2009, he quickly became a celebrity in the golf world, a crossover star to young and old. Soon he was gracing golf magazine covers, flashing across the television screen in commercials and starring in PGA Tour pitches as the game's next leading young man.

But as his win column remained barren, critics charged that it was unwarranted attention and all that mattered to Fowler was his image.

Even after he broke through for his lone PGA Tour title in the 2012 Wells Fargo Championship, some people still considered him talent wasted, a symbol of a new generation who chases fame and worships material goods.

"I wasn't trying to come out here and stand out and try and be someone I wasn't. I partnered myself with companies that allowed me to express myself. That's just me being me and having fun," Fowler says. "I wasn't trying to be a poster boy. I was just living my dream of playing on the PGA Tour."

That dream began when he was 3 and his grandfather, Yutaka Tanaka, first took him to the public Murrieta Valley Golf Range in the arid valley east of Los Angeles.

The bug bit early and the range became his second home. He would win nickels, dimes and quarters in various contests against older kids and saved up for a new golf club or clothing.

His father, Rod, would haul sand and gravel from his business to the range and swap it out for range balls for Fowler to hit. Meanwhile, his mother, Lynn, worked in the office of a steel company in addition to driving her son and daughter to school, the mall and sporting events.

"He was born to play golf," Lynn says. "You just knew he was blessed with some gift, and I figured early on I couldn't stop it. By the time he was 5 his favorite thing was the clinic he took that taught the etiquette and rules of golf. There was structure to it, you couldn't cheat, and the other kids couldn't strong arm you out of anything. By the time he was 7 he knew how a golf ball was made because he would cut them in half. And he knew how an iron was made, how to make the ball go farther.

"A crucial time for him was when he was 8 and he decided to quit baseball because it was affecting his golf swing."

Another crucial time came when he was 15. His father, a motocross star who won the 1986 Baja 1000, got him his first dirt bike and Fowler pursued both paths until he broke three bones in his foot in a wipe out.

And during all this time, when he was hitting range balls with his grandfather, he learned of internment camps. His grandfather was 6 when he was one of 110,000 people of Japanese heritage who lived on the Pacific coast and were forced into War Relocation Camps.

So, too, were his great grandmother, Yoshi Okubo Tanaka, and great-great aunt, Mine Okubo. Both were accomplished artists and Mine Okubo wrote Citizen 13660, a memoir of life in relocation centers in California and Utah. Fowler wrote a report on that book in elementary school. The stories he heard still influence him.

So, too, did his early years on the Tour.

The criticism that he was all flash ate at him but he never showed the angst outwardly. He just continued to work as he sought to make a difference inside and outside the gallery ropes.

"If it did bother him it didn't really have an effect because he shrugs things off like that because his personality doesn't allow him to focus on the negative," says caddie Joe Skovron, who has been on Fowler's bag for every pro tournament but one. "He's a pretty confident kid. He knows this is his arena and he loves it. He has stepped his preparation up a notch. He deserves to be here. He has put in the time, he's put in the effort, put in the prep."

"I don't think anybody on Tour thought he was all flash and no substance. We all know he has a lot of game and puts in the work," Bradley says. "I know Rickie loves to play golf, he loves to get games going, and if you love golf as much as Rickie does, there is no way you don't work it."

Last year, Fowler wanted to take another step in his evolution and sought out Harmon, who worked with Tiger Woods in the past and now works with Phil Mickelson, among many others.

Fowler, who plays fast but at times loose, has tightened up his swing and ball flight. And he's gotten more consistent and longer despite his 5-8, 155-pound frame.

"I actually believe now and come into tournaments knowing that I can be in contention and that I have the game to be there," Fowler says.

To others, that belief is born from natural maturation and experience. The results have improved, the volume of his clothing choices has toned down and the hair is shorter and cropped. But his mother hasn't seen any change at all.

"He's still the same," Lynn says. "Some way or another that kid on his own has figured out to always triumph or get over hurdles that were in front of him. I learned to have faith in that kid because some way or another he knows what to do and has whatever it is inside of him to get things done."